"Are you okay?" he asked.
I didn't say anything, but I gave him the most awesome Thumbs Up ever.
"You are an awesome shade of green," I told him.
"Yeah," he said. "I don't feel so awesome."
I kind of felt some not-so-awesome reality sort of coming back to me. It was like seeing something in your peripheral vision when you are only half awake.
"I need to find someone who knows something about our son," he declared.
"Nonsense," I said. "They'll find us if we need to do anything."
My husband gave me a look that I vaguely understood. It kind of maybe meant that I didn't really necessarily understand what was going on. (FYI, they have awesome drugs at this hospital.)
A woman I had never seen before and haven't seen since harshly shoved aside my recovery room curtain and roughly asked me if I felt okay and did I need orange juice. I said yes to the orange juice and also asked for crackers and a Chik-Fil-A breakfast biscuit. She raised an eyebrow and returned a few minutes later with five packages of saltines, two cartons of apple juice, and a can of ginger ale. No awesome chicken biscuits in sight. The drugs were wearing off enough at this point that I understood the ginger ale was for my husband, and I was beginning to remember that he was sick. I gave him everything except the apple juice and one package of saltines (I was hungry, too!).
I kind of remember calling my mom, who was at a park with my daughter and the rest of our family. I'm sure I told her that our son was okay for now, having been admitted into the NICU.
NICU.
Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.
Those ten syllables are deceptively simple.
It sounds like a sweet place where preemies go to grow, like the Cabbage Patch!
It isn't. It looks like the place in "Jurassic Park" where they grew dinosaurs.
Doesn't it?
The first time I went there, I was rolled in. My nurse was amazing. She's from Australia (I don't know why she's here), so her accent was awesome. She wheeled me into the NICU, gave me only a fleeting glance at my son, and then wheeled me back into my room at top speed. Immediately upon entering my room, she began talking about how important breastfeeding is. I was still heavily drugged, but she was taking no excuses. She hooked my boobs into a Medela hospital pump, started the machine for me, all the while extolling the virtues of immediate breast milk, and wrapping his first blanket around my neck so I was surrounded by his scent. I expressed the tiniest bit of colostrum ever, but this nurse was ecstatic. She wrapped me back up in a blanket and threw me on a wheelchair, congratulating me on this itty bitty bit of colostrum.
This was the second nurse that made me realize that nurses do all the work. When we got back from the NICU that first time, she told my husband how awesome I was for producing such amazing colostrum. She enthusiastically showed him how to clean out my pump parts. She took some time to explain to us how difficult it is for babies with Down Syndrome to nurse, and how important it was for me to never give up. She stressed the importance of pumping, and she talked about the possibilities of our son learning how to nurse on his own.
She kept coming back to see me, to check on me, to hook me up to the breast pump. She showed my husband how to operate the pump, how to care for me between nurses. She took the time to learn our names and she gave us her cellphone number.
The next nurses were almost as nice; but maybe my memory is clouded.
Two or three days after he was born, my sweet sister and her family had to go home. They live 5 hours away from this hospital. My parents and my grandmother went back to the city in which my family lives so they could look after my daughter. The weekend before Christmas was upon us.
This hospital is cold, cavernous. I spent all this time wearing the hospital gown. I didn't change. Complications in my surgery required a few extra days in the hospital for me. I wasn't able to walk around on my own. I spent many days in a wheelchair; my husband wheeled me down to the NICU, that terrible catheter still inside me.
That catheter.
The handwashing!
Two minutes of handwashing!!
That's the equivalent of singing "Happy Birthday" about 6 times. The sight of the NICU sink will live on in my memory forever.
Which brings me to my first Beauty Tip From the NICU:
MOISTURIZE HANDS BEFORE, DURING, AND AFTER EACH VISIT TO THE NICU
Why is this a beauty tip?
Our hands demonstrate our actions to the world. If your hands do not portray your intentions to all observers, you should re-evaluate the actions of your hands. If your hands do not portray beauty and love, you should re-evaluate the intentions behind your actions.
